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Because Atlanta is the home of the CDC. And since we all live in America they are responsible for diseases everywhere...
EDIT: I just checked the English and German rules and now understand your confusion. The German rules explicitly say that this is why players start in Atlanta. For some reason the English rules skip that part.
Danach nimmt sich jeder ...

I hadn't thought about it before, but the English rules could probably have been written a bit more precisely as well. However, your final interpretation is correct, i.e. cubes are only removed from the city the Medic is in.
From page 5 of the rules:
if the Medic at any time ﬁnds herself in a city that contains cubes of a disease that has been cured, ...

Yes. Eradication affects the color of cubes, not the color of cities.
The color of the cities tells you what color is on the corresponding infection and player cards, so cities will certainly tend to have only cubes of that color, but they can potentially have cubes of any color.
Eradicating a given color disease simply stops cubes of that color from being ...

Good question! Amazingly enough, there's a definitive answer. The reason is described in detail in this board game geek thread, where game designer Tom Lehmann explains that playtesting showed the game became too long and boring with 5 players. Basically the game becomes 50% longer, and there are large gaps where individual players don't get to do anything. ...

You won. The rules state that in order to win, you must discover the cure to all 4 diseases. The moment you discover the 4th cure, the game ends and you win.
From the rules:
The players win as soon as cures to all 4 diseases are discovered.
And:
The players do not have to eradicate all 4 diseases to win;
just cure them. Once all diseases are ...

Yes - it's possible not to be able to win. In fact it's possible to not be able to survive until the second turn.
Here's an example of someone playing a game which they lost on the first turn: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/373797/it-takes-talent-to-lose-on-the-first-turn
Maybe they could have done better, but if they had cards such that they couldn't ...

A few points:
Movement is usually the most expensive action. Sure, you're getting closer to be being able to do something useful, but the moving itself isn't technically doing anything - it's just using up a turn. Because of this, if you go to a city with 3 disease cubes on it - strongly consider clearing them all off. If you don't, it just means you'll ...

Pandemic is an interesting game, with an interesting luck curve. Actually, on heroic levels there's less randomness in the game than on normal levels, since fewer black cards will come into play in the game. The players, therefore, have more predictability and can plan better.
One of the most important read the rules trick is that the rules state that ...

From the rules:
Share Knowledge Sometimes it’s hard
for one player to get the cards
necessary to discover a cure. The Share
Knowledge action (while difficult to
perform) can be useful in these cases.
Transfer a card from one player to
another. Every card transferred costs
1 action. Both your pawn and your
fellow player’s pawn must be in ...

According to the official instructions (page 3), the player deck is prepared by first splitting it into multiple piles of roughly-equal size (one pile per Epidemic card) and shuffling exactly one Epidemic card into each pile. These piles are then stacked on top of each other.
So even in an easy 4-Epidemic game, there will guaranteed be one Epidemic card in ...

Actually, I've found that it's easier with fewer players. My husband and I play two-player games with six epidemics and win about half our games, but when we play with two other (competent) players five epidemics gives us that win rate and six is hard.
While, with fewer players, you have fewer roles in the game, that's offset by not having so many other ...

While I have both and definitely notice the similarities, I don't regret the purchase. Here's why:
1) Forbidden Island is easier to teach. Not that I think Pandemic is very complicated, but I've been able to teach Forbidden Island to my 8 year old where Pandemic was a bit too much. Also, the fewer number of bits (cubes and such) has made the game less ...

You completely resolve one epidemic card and then the other. I don't have any concrete rule to back that up but consider what would happen if you drew the two cards separately:
In this case it would be obvious that you resolve each card.
And now consider if there should be a difference to what happens in the game depending on how you draw your cards...

No, a disease with no cubes at the beginning of the game is not eradicated.
For a disease to be eradicated, it must be cured in addition to there being no cubes left of its color. At the beginning of the game, it is clearly not cured. If you subsequently draw an infection card for that color, you still add a cube to that city. If you manage to discover the ...

The "Resilient Population" card lets you remove one city from the discard pile. If you are afraid you're about to get an Epidemic (or you have just gotten one!) and have the existing discard pile shuffled back onto the top, you can remove the most dangerous city so that there's no risk of an outbreak.

This question was answered by Matt Leacock, the designer of Pandemic, on BoardGameGeek:
You can play the cards at any time, however, you can't play them
between an event and the representation of the event on the board.
Some scenarios may help explain this:
Scenario 1: Player #1 has a Special Event card for "Resilient
Population." During the ...

Further clarification isn't needed. Under the Eradicating a Disease section you quoted (emphasis mine), the rules instruct you to put the cubes away, they will not be used for the rest of the game.
If a cure for a given disease has been discovered and all of the disease cubes of that color have been removed from the board, ﬂip the Cure marker for the ...

From the Pandemic Rules:
The Dispatcher may move other player’s pawns on his turn (using any of the available Basic actions) as if they were his own pawn. He may also spend an action to move a pawn to any city that contains another pawn. He may only move other players’ pawns if they permit him to do so.
Note: For the Charter Flight action, the ...

It's the dispatcher ability minus bringing people together. For example, you can use it to move the containment specialist or (with a cure) the medic through cities to remove cubes. We've done this to get double duty out of the medic late in the game when we were racing the board.
You are using your own move actions (and any constraints or benefits they ...

This is actually explicitly mentioned in the rulebook, on page 6, under Epidemics:
2) Infect: Take the bottom card from the Infection Draw Pile and add 3 cubes to the city pictured on the card, then place the card into the Infection Discard Pile. Note: No city can contain more than 3 cubes of any one colour. If the Epidemic would cause the city to ...

The differences between the original version of Pandemic and the 2013 version are essentially cosmetic. The only significant change is to the Role cards. The 2013 games features 2 new roles, Contingency Planner and Quarantine Specialist, that aren't in the original version. It also has the revised Operations Expert from the original On The Brink expansion. ...

My wife and I have a house rule to let us choose the number of epidemics after we see what roles we get. We usually play "If we have a Medic then 6, otherwise 5". That keeps the challenge ratio at a good spot in all cases.

The hardest part of computing the probability is determining the best strategy for the players. I have used a script to simulate games where players use a few simple tactics, and estimated the probability based on these strategies. Given that the strategies I implemented are not the optimal strategy, these figures provide an upper bound on the probability ...

Yes, you still move the infection rate forward and intensify by shuffling the discards. The only thing that eradicating a disease does is prevent you from placing more cubes of that disease on the board.

First, note that the hand limit is 7 cards, NOT 8 cards!
You cannot hold more than 7 cards in your hand for any length of time. This means that while you are holding 7 cards, the researcher cannot give you 2 cards. Actions are one at a time, so first the researcher would give you a card, at which point you would be over the limit. Before any other action is ...

You can play it on any player (not just yourself) at any time. That one player is then allowed to choose a specific role from the available ones.
The thread here has the game's designer clarifying that it is intended to only affect a single player. He doesn't specifically comment about choosing versus random, but since earlier people mention choosing and ...

Atlanta is US headquarters for disease control.
I don't see any gameplay related reason as to why the game would not function equally well by moving the starting position to any other city of your choosing.
As an aside, note that Essen is a map location. It's a fairly minor German city of around 500.000 inhabitants, but included in many games because of ...